Thomas Lynn Crisman's Obituary
Thomas Lynn Crisman, an intellectual property attorney and partner at several of Dallas’ largest law firms, died peacefully on August 3, 2020 at his home in Dallas, Texas. He was 78.
His wife, Tina Crisman, said a glioblastoma brain tumor that was diagnosed in June 2019 was the cause of death.
Crisman trained as an electrical engineer at Southern Methodist University and as an attorney at Georgetown, where he served as editor of the Georgetown Law Review’s prestigious Law Journal. Being both an engineer and lawyer, Crisman was technically inclined, and loved solving problems with the ultimate goal of finding a better way to do the ordinary.
In 1980, Crisman told the Dallas Morning News, that he and his partner, Stanley Moore, were “tinkerers at heart.” Both Crisman and Moore helped inventors garner hundreds of patents, from a chicken plucker to a toenail cleaner to a shampoo dispenser built into a showerhead. Many inventions they came across were outlandish, but they focused on the practical, the inventions that were accompanied by an expression of “I-wish-I-had-thought-of-that!”
For their own invention, Crisman and Moore created the “FreezeSleeve,” a holder injected with blue freezing gel to keep your drink cold hours after taking it out of the fridge.
Crisman appreciated ingenuity and creativity, but also acknowledged the drawbacks of an inventors’ ego and the constant craving for recognition.
“Most of these guys won’t make a million dollars from their inventions,” Crisman told the Dallas Times Herald in a 1980 article featuring local inventors. “But if they get a patent, that’s a great ego thing. If they also make some money, well, that’s a bonus.”
Crisman’s fascination with technology and the laws protecting novel ideas spanned multiple industries including inventions for oil drilling, cold-fusion technology, computer software and cellular technology. He read voraciously, sinking into a comfortable chair, often wearing a Mickey Mouse tee-shirt for the weekend, and emerged with detailed knowledge of HTML language or the workings of a particular gadget that set it apart from the lists of discoveries he’d seen at the U.S. Office of Patents.
For several years in the 1970s, Crisman lectured on patent, trademark, copyright, anti-trust and unfair competition law at the SMU School of Law. Most recently, at Dallas-based Marconi, Crisman worked to transform the way patent licensing is done by supporting licensing platforms that connected many of the world’s most important innovators and product manufacturers.
Crisman helped companies integrate different cellular wireless patents on the licensing platform, Avanci, so companies like Volvo, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari and Bentley could pay fair rates to license wireless technologies to products.
In 2011, while a Principal at McKool Smith, Crisman was part of the legal team on one of the
biggest litigation victories of that time: a $290 million judgment won on behalf of i4i Limited and i4i Inc, in a patent infringement judgment against software giant Microsoft. The case went as high up as the U.S. Supreme Court and set a clear precedent for how patents would be protected.
Shortly after the FreezeSleeve hit the market in the summer of 1980, Crisman took his first 10-day Vipassana Meditation course in Chicago with Mr. S.N. Goenka. Moved by his experience, Crisman wrote to Mr. Goenka in India offering his legal services typed on a “letterhead and good quality paper,” according to William Hart, author of The Art of Living, who would later become a close friend to Crisman.
That winter, Crisman traveled to India to meet Mr. Goenka personally, making up his mind that he would leave his flourishing legal practice and just meditate. Mr. Goenka’s response surprised him: “No, you can’t do that,” Crisman recalls Mr. Goenka telling him. “There are people whose rights are being violated, and you need to help them.” Besides, people who might be interested in Vipassana meditation need a connection to somebody of their own background.
Energized by his teacher’s advice, Crisman returned to Dallas and resumed his legal career, but reserved a special place in his life for Vipassana Meditation. He negotiated time off of work to travel to India to participate in monthlong silent retreats every year thereafter, and only stopped traveling to India when his illness made international travel impossible.
While his career ascended, so did Crisman’s dedication to Vipassana Meditation. By day, Crisman became one of Dallas’ top attorneys, protecting scrappy underdog inventors from corporations claiming their inventions. On nights and weekends, and while on vacation, Crisman helped Mr. Goenka build the legal, structural and procedural foundations to what would become a worldwide volunteer-based nonprofit organization.
Crisman helped Mr. Goenka bring his teachings to scale on an international level, by offering to make a comprehensive set of recordings – both audio and video – to capture the entire teaching of a 10-day course. The recordings became the basis for teaching materials that have been translated to more than 150 languages and continue to be used worldwide on Vipassana courses today.
Crisman anticipated the importance of the Internet while it was in its nascent stage, and secured the domain Dhamma.org, programming the first iterations of an international website for Vipassana Meditation.
“What a stroke of genius that was,” said Barry Lapping, a teacher in the Goenka tradition and Crisman’s close friend. “It is now one of the most recognized names in the world of meditation.”
Since its inception, the URL has become the hub of Vipassana activities, offering students course schedules, guidelines for practice and ways to learn more about Vipassana.
With his pro bono legal services, Crisman helped Mr. Goenka and his students form legal structures for more than 125 meditation centers globally, secured trademarks and copyrights for all of Goenka’s writings and recordings, and other film and publication rights for works related to the Goenka tradition.
Crisman, with the ardent support of his wife of more than 30 years, started a Vipassana center in Kaufman, Texas in July 1990. Dhamma Siri now serves thousands of students every year.
“Tom was never content with the status quo,” said Kevin Nash, an attorney who Crisman mentored and later convinced to take a meditation course. “His vision was inspired, prophetic, formidable and almost daunting in its scope and depth.”
Thomas Crisman was born on August 10, 1941 in Marlow, Oklahoma, and grew up in southwest Texas. His mother, Mattie Ruth Crisman, was a homemaker. His father, George Thomas “Pete” Crisman was a self-taught mechanical engineer who managed oil pump stations in Sweetwater, Texas.
In addition to his wife, Tina, Thomas is survived by a daughter from a previous marriage, Courtney Crisman; a sister Nelda Gelber; a grandson, Logan Naab and granddaughter, Sheridan Naab of his deceased daughter, Hillary Naab.
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